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Andrew Mueller takes a pen to Dennis Rodman to remark upon the absurdity of a has-been basketball player making a diplomatic visit to North Korea.

It is – obviously – far too soon to tell what lasting impact on global politics may be made by the unlikely ascent of Donald Trump. There is an upbeat projection, though exploring it feels presently like grasping longingly at a frayed and withered straw: that perhaps this debacle will remind humanity that there are worse things than being governed by stolid professionals, incremental tinkerers and drearily competent bureaucrats.

At least as likely, however, is the miserable prospect that Trump’s leveraging of tawdry celebrity into executive power encourages any yahoo who has attracted a measure of attention, for anything at all, to believe that this qualifies them to perform the difficult and subtle business of statecraft.

With the obvious exception of Trump himself, there is presently no better demonstration of this woeful phenomenon than the freelance diplomatic career of Dennis Rodman.

Dennis Rodman was a basketball player, and by all accounts a very good one (although this column believes that being good at basketball is like being good at tap-dancing: impressive in the abstract, but why would anybody wish to spend their time doing that?)

As you may have read, Rodman has just undertaken his fifth visit to North Korea, to which he appears to have appointed himself his nation’s emissary, the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic not being on formal speaking terms.

Much of the coverage of Rodman’s visit has focused, reasonably, on the fact that the five-time NBA champion enjoys the acquaintance of both Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. Indeed, on Rodman’s most recent visit to the Pyongyang, though he was not favoured on this occasion with an audience with Kim, he did pass along a copy of Trump’s dreadful book “The Art Of The Deal” (pictured above).

While we cannot altogether discount the possibility that Rodman just forgot about a present until the last minute, and that the airport gift shop was all out of Toblerones, there has been much beard-stroking contemplation of what this might mean, and whether some brilliant and subtle strategy is being executed – so clever that even the clever people who do, or report on, this stuff for a living, cannot fathom it.

Is it possible that maybe a famous former athlete is, in fact, a sagacious choice of mediator between a belligerent, volatile, thin-skinned demagogue with stupid hair and the Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea?

Kim Jong Un talking with Dennis Rodman on Jan. 8, 2014, as they watch an exhibition basketball game at an indoor stadium in Pyongyang. Rodman's most recent visit on Tuesday was his first to the country since President Donald Trump took office. Photo: Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP.

This is a mistake we should have stopped making. It was a common error during Trump’s campaign for the presidency – assumption or at least speculation that there must be more to it than this, that it could not be as simple as a vindictive, vainglorious moron somehow blustering his way to the White House by talking obvious rubbish which was believed by folk either pitiably or determinedly credulous.

Trump’s first five months in office have resoundingly demonstrated that what it looked like was what it was. It says much about how Trump has scrambled the mind of America’s media than anyone, however desperate their need to fill their page, is expending any wordage wondering whether Dennis Rodman is doing for Donald Trump in North Korea what Henry Kissinger did for Richard Nixon in China.

The simplest analysis is wretched enough – that Rodman, possessed by the delusions of omnicompetence often engendered by fame, is merely swanning fatuously about in the hope of attracting still further attention to himself. This is not merely the likeliest explanation, but also the most optimistic.

For an idea of how much trouble the United States – and, by extension, the world – is in, if Rodman actually is operating under instruction from Trump, imagine what it might say about Australia and its elected leadership if Malcolm Turnbull appointed Jason Akermanis our ambassador to the United Nations.

A picture taken on 28 February 2013 of Kim Jong-Un hugging Dennis Rodman following a basketball game between the Harlem Globetrotters team and North Korean University of Physical Education. Photo: AP.

Sport and politics are indivisible. This does not have to be a bad thing – sport can be an engine of social progress, a vehicle of diplomacy or whichever metaphor for headway you’re having yourself. It does not necessarily follow, however, that actual politics should be conducted by actual sportspeople.

There are, of course, exceptions to every rule – one thinks of Brian Dixon, who in the mid-1960s was both a member of Victoria’s parliament, and a sprightly winger with Melbourne.

For the most part, however, the idea that Dennis Rodman is the world’s point man as it attempts the delicate task of talking a paranoid, nuclear-armed tyranny out of doing something regrettable, should instil the same foreboding as seeing, say, John Kerry named at centre half-forward next time your team plays.

At any rate, it is possible that this entire column has been an exercise in overthought. So far as I can discern, North Korea’s media has not deemed Rodman’s visit an event worthy of its attention. Rodong Sinmun, the baroquely vituperative newspaper of the Workers’ Party, has not covered it. Rodman’s moment may have passed.

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